Yesterday I got myself a little extra Xmas present with “Ninja Gaiden Black” and “Prince of Persia: Warrior Within”. Actually I wanted to get the original Ninja Gaiden for Xbox right when it was released last year, but various reviews mentioned how hard it is, so I skipped it for now. Then the Black-edition was mentioned during the GOTY award show on Gamespot.com so I decided to get it esp. since they said, it would be easier than the original title.

Well … first: I’m really happy that I never got the original Ninja Gaiden and waited for “Black”. I started playing it about 2 hours ago and was really enjoying it. The battles were something to get used to but after a few minutes it was really fun fighting the various Shinobi. You learn pretty fast, that blocking and evading is the key to winning these little fights against multiple enemies. But after getting to the first save point the problems began. The first boss fight is really tough because he blocks nearly every attack and has a special attack which can’t be blocked. So evading is very important here. Not that it helped me much so I died time after time.

And here comes a cool new feature of “Ninja Gaiden Black”: If you die a few times more or less in the same area Ayame appears, talks to your dying body and gives you a gift: Let’s call it the newbie-shinobi mode. There fighting the various enemies and esp. the end boss is a little bit easier, but just a little bit. I barely noticed a difference but it was enough to be finally able to beat the boss of the first mission :D Basically your attacks get a little bit stronger in this mode which is just enough to make the game easy enough not to be on the frustrating side.

Well, this was just the first mission. I’m currently somewhere around mission 3 and had no real problems there, so I hope this new level will be low enough for me :)